It's a wrap: Putting a bow on Sound Tigers season

Michael Fornabaio

Published 7:33 pm, Monday, April 21, 2014

BRIDGEPORT -- The usual conversations on days like Monday in the Bridgeport Sound Tigers' dressing room are good wishes for the summer, memories of the season past, looking forward to getting back together in September.

"It was nice to meet you" isn't tossed around so often on break-up day, but teammates who just met a week or three ago don't have a ton of shared memories or guarantees of a common future.

The challenge all year for the Sound Tigers was to translate a young and ever-changing roster into a successful team. They stayed competitive, but it wasn't easy, and they didn't win much at the end.

"It's been a tough season," said John Persson, who was here for most of it but also made his NHL debut. "It started off very tough. We finally got some wins together, and then that team got shattered with those guys going up."

After the March 5 NHL trade deadline, seven players went up to the Islanders, joining two -- leading scorer Ryan Strome, who posted a remarkable 49 points in 37 games for Bridgeport, and Anders Lee -- who'd gone up soon before.

It was a litany of numbers. The team used 65 players, second-most in the AHL since at least 1997. Of those, 42 played after the March 12 AHL trade deadline.

Several were sent at the same time to Stockton (ECHL) to bolster that team for a playoff run, further depleting Bridgeport's roster. The departed were mostly replaced by 12 different players on amateur tryouts.

"You can't let your game slip, but you want to help the younger guys," said defenseman Joe Finley, who'd played on teams with a lot more veterans but was one of the more-experienced players here. "You do a lot of different things, just in that leadership role."

That left the Sound Tigers to struggle to the end, winning two of their last 21 games and finishing 29th overall. A one-win October, with a young team adjusting to the pro game, had put them in a deep hole for playoff contention, anyway.

In an organization that has always stressed development, though, those assorted call-ups are a big part of the story. Of the 30 players who finished the year on Long Island, 15 spent significant time in Bridgeport the past two years. Some, like Calvin de Haan and Brock Nelson, were playing key roles by the end of the year.

"I'm proud of all of them," Bridgeport coach Scott Pellerin said. "That's our job. Our job's to develop the young prospects ... and make them assets for the New York Islanders and get opportunities for them.

"Those guys came from all different backgrounds," he added. "To have that group come together and work together, not only play games for the Islanders but have an important impact on their team, it's something I'm very proud of and my staff's very proud of."

WHO'S NEW? The New York Islanders drafted to shore up their pool of prospect defensemen the past few years. A number of them are due to turn pro this season, such as Ryan Pulock (who played three Bridgeport games this week), Griffin Reinhart (seen as a possibility to start in the NHL) and Adam Pelech (still in the OHL playoffs for Erie), among several others unsigned like Jesse Graham, who also played some games here.

WHO'S BACK? The list of free agents includes organization mainstays like Kevin Poulin and Aaron Ness; some of the team's more-experienced players like Chris Bruton, Joe Finley and Justin Johnson; and a host of AHL-contract and tryout players who played a lot late in the year. Some returning players could challenge for NHL spots, too.

WHAT NEXT? Bridgeport has missed the playoffs three of the past four years, finishing well out of the race in two of those seasons; the exception to that rule needed a huge second-half run. Can the Islanders put together the right mix to challenge for a playoff spot, both in the NHL and here, again?

WHO'S BEEN AROUND? Bridgeport began the year without an official AHL veteran (over 260 games of NHL, AHL and top-European-league experience) on the roster. It finished without one, too; no one reached that plateau here. Few teams win in the AHL playoffs without experience.

WHAT ISN'T HAPPENING OFF-ICE? Bridgeport's attendance overall was down from last year's all-time high, though taking out the effects of two nights of free tickets early in 2012-13 (a goodwill gesture after Hurricane Sandy) cuts the drop to about 4 percent; the league-wide average was down closer to 5 percent. Reports have Islanders owner Charles Wang talking sale of the franchise; the Islanders move to Brooklyn in 2015, and the Sound Tigers remain a possibility to move to Nassau Coliseum after that building's renovation, with another AHL team then likely to follow them in here. There are lots of moving parts all around the AHL, though, and the landscape could look quite different by 2015-16.